I simply stated a fact, that

I simply stated a fact, that in their daily struggle of the class war, the Party, any party, is not necessary requirement. But, Robin, I also wrote “What is needed is to demonstrate the causes and the connections with capitalist exploitation”  In another post,  i said ” We have to make available the right ideas in sufficent depth and breadth, so that they can be picked up and used” In yet an earlier post,  i declared (and recognised a current weakness of the Party ) “Yet that socialist consciousness cannot  be achieved solely by ideological persuasion and propaganda. It has to link up with the practical struggle. That is the dilemma. The SPGB role is a limited one. When conditions are ripe the working class will acquire their power of self-determination.” That all requires engaging with and communicating directly in whatever means the working class seek to take and it isn’t abstentionalist. So i fail to see your conclusion that i do not argue that our role is to create  links with immediate struggles and our goal of socialism. There are no shortage of organisations who try to co-opt direct action and reform movements and  I witnessed in the 70s the IS using the Claimants Unions as a recruiting ground.  We all are aware of the way unions and strikes suffer from  manipulation  by assorted Left groups to the detriment of  those actually involved. Someone has pointed out on this thread , forget who or where, that the last thing strikers  need is newspaper-sellers pushing a line and from direct personal experience i know this to be fact. ( As an aside, the last picket line i visited , i never handed out a leaflet or Standard, i gave a case of beer!) But those groups who do attach themselves to direct action/reform struggles, has it resulted in the growth you suggest would be the result?  I hazard from anecdotal evidence that they too have all been suffering from declining membership.  This is why the Occupy Movement was so  important and i fully understand your and Stuart’s sympathies and support for it. It was different. It involved new ways of organising and new tactics and some new fresh demands. It challenged everybodys previous positions and demanded re-evaluation of them. Without the intervention of political parties workers have developed new strategies for new conditions. 19th C – New Unionism, beginning of the 20th – Syndicalism, the 30s sit-in strikes, in the post-war – wildcat unofficial strikes , 60s/70s – rank and file movements. From the tokenism of mass protest marches, we now have near permanent occupations of public spaces. The SPGB has written  “The particular form of economic organisation through which the struggle is conducted is one which the circumstances of the struggle must mainly determine. The chief thing is to maintain the struggle whilst capitalism lasts.” As socialists we do not impose our position upon the working class,so thankfully if we as a group are  wrong, the consequences are not transferred to others of our class by a leadership or party vanguard. However, we can put forard our preferences for what we consider “sound lines” and IMHO the Indian companion party explained our position in trade unions well enough for it to apply equally to other movements. “In countries like India workers have the legal right to form trade unions. But there, too, unlike Europe and America, most of the big trade unions have been organised from above as fund-raising, vote-catching political subsidiaries of self-seeking “leaders” than as spontaneous, grass-root, independent and autonomous organisations of the working class to defend their economic interests. Moreover in the absence of factory-wide free election of trade union functionaries, there are as many unions as there are political parties, most of them operating with their hired gangsters and peculiar flags having very little regard to class-unity.  Actually these trade unions are not genuine trade unions. Still workers’ organised resistance against exploitation is a must; and for that matter, their resistance struggles must have to be freed from the infamy of remaining divided and subservient to various capitalist political parties. This they can achieve by organising themselves in fully integrated and independent trade unions of their own, by throwing away all kinds of blind faith and submissiveness regarding the wretched hierarchy of subscription-squeezer and flag-hoister “leaders”. The working class movement is a movement of equals-organised by the workers and in the interest of the workers.  No “leader”, supposedly having some unknown “god”-given or “intrinsic” trick-finding qualities given is necessary to lead the working-class movement. For a “trick” cannot throw profit overboard. Simply because private property lives to levy its tribute on labour. All workers are able, rather abler than the “leaders”, to understand their own class-interests only if they are fully informed of their circumstances from local to global. And to be informed of what is happening around, and what has happened earlier, what they require is to meet in regular general assemblies, discuss and debate all that matters keeping ears and minds open and decide to take such steps as deemed useful. In case a strike is to be declared, they would need a strike committee to be formed of recallable delegates elected and mandated in the general assembly-thus retaining the ultimate control in their own hands. Where there are many rival trade union shops in a single factory or workplace operated by many capitalist political parties, a socialist worker can neither keep on supporting the one he is in, nor go on seeking membership of one after another or all at the same time, nor can he open his own “socialist” trade union instead. What he can, and should, do as an immediate perspective, is to try to form a “political group” with like-minded fellow workers and campaign for a class-wide democratic unity as stated above. Whenever an opportunity arrives the group must use the assemblies as a forum for political propaganda to expose the uselessness of “leaders” and show that the trade union movement is unable to solve the problems of crises, insecurity, poverty, unemployment, hunger and wars” [my emphasis] Manifesto of the World Socialist Party (India), March 1995.